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Thursday, July 25, 2019 • Vol. 138, No. 1 • Stoughton, WI • ConnectStoughton.com • $1.25
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Town of Rutland
Violent sex offender to be placed Supervised release program limits, monitors movement outside home AMBER LEVENHAGEN Unified Newspaper Group
Photo by Mackenzie Krumme
Maria Weesner and son Maclyn Weesner celebrate after they win “Simon Says” during Relay for Life Friday, July 19 at the Mandt Community Center.
A relay to overcome
The annual Relay for Life of Stoughton McFarland and Oregon took place at the Mandt Center Friday, July 19. There will be more than one million people diagnosed with cancer this year, said committee member Kristine Annen. “Our survivors and those no longer with us is the reason we need to keep coming together,” said Annen.
Inside More Relay for Life photos Page 16
– Mackenzie Krumme
A violent sex offender will be moved into a home in the Town of Rutland “on or before” Aug. 15, the state Department of Health Services confirmed Monday. Neighbors of the home where the patient will be housed, 3482 Hwy. 138, notified the Town Board of the placement last month. The neighbors told the board at its June 4 meeting they were notified by local law enforcement officials when an officer knocked on their door and told them about the move. The move is through a supervised release program facilitated by DHS and Sand Ridge Secure Treatment Center, which is one of two secure treatment centers operated by the Division of Care and Treatment Services in
Wisconsin. A 2016 state law prohibits local units of government from barring such placements, which are by default in the same counties where the offenders lived prior to being committed for treatment. In general, patients on supervised release face much stricter limitations than other released sex offenders, according to the Sand Ridge website. Chaperones are required whenever they leave the house for at least a year, satellites monitor their movements, a n d t h ey g e t f r e q u e n t in-home visits and polygraph tests. Shawn Tessmann, director of Dane County Human Services, helped answer questions from town trustees and community members who attended the July 9 meeting. Those concerns included how the town is notified, what information is shared regarding the crime committed and the person involved, and how the community is protected, as well as the patient. “It’s not a fun situation, and the community concern is absolutely
Turn to Offender/Page 14
Committee focused on downtown growth, support Gas leak fixed after downtown Focus on community block briefly evacuated Friday Get involved To participate in focus groups about downtown Stoughton, contact Downtown Revitalization subcommittee member Denise Duranczyk at 873-8302.
AMBER LEVENHAGEN Unified Newspaper Group
Whether it’s more public bathrooms or parking spaces, or a way to minimize the number of vacant businesses, the first step to helping Stoughton’s historic downtown is learning what the problem is. Or if there’s a problem at all. The Downtown Revitalization subcommittee,
formed in February as an offshoot of the Redevelopment Authority, has enlisted the help of Ayres Associates, an architectural and engineering services firm based in Madison, to create an economic development plan to help guide investment into the downtown.
Courier Hub
The committee was formed by long-term resident Sharon Mason-Boersma and former alder and c u r r e n t R DA m e m b e r Denise Duranczyk earlier this year. Since its formation, which was prompted after Mason-Boersma talked to several downtown
SCOTT DE LARUELLE Unified Newspaper Group
Stoughton police evacuated people in houses for a one-block radius around 10 a.m. Friday, July 19, as workers repaired a gas leak near the intersection
of West South Street and South Monroe Street. The leak was caused when construction workers struck a gas main. Power in the area was “shut off for a bit, as well,” SPD
Turn to Leak/Page 12
Inside People You Should Know Pages 8-9
Turn to Downtown/Page 13
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outreach, identifying project goals
businesses about how they feel about that area, the committee has begun community outreach and identified the next steps to help get Ayres as much information as possible to help create a plan before the year ends. “We’re trying to get a clear idea of what the issues are in downtown, and also what the strengths are, so we can build on those things,” Duranczyk told the Hub. “We’re going to take all of that information, along with the data that the